Borenstein Group

Washington DC’s Expert Top B2B|B2G Digital Branding Agency

Strategy

Top 5 Blogging Myths Debunked

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For small business owners, independent entrepreneurs and corporate leadership alike, maintaining a blog is an effective way to be regarded as a thought leader and expert in your field. Plus, it’s no secret that frequently updating a blog that exists as a sub-domain of a business website is a great opportunity for search engine optimization. Now, even though “blogging” entered our collective vocabulary over a decade ago, there are still a number of myths that surround the pseudoscience of blogology. Let’s take a second to debunk a few:

  1. Myth: Quantity Beats Quality – If the goal is for your blog to be read by actual human people, it is far more critical to produce quality content than to post drivel daily. Always maintain the highest standards of subject matter and grammar, and use a tone that speaks to your audience.
  2. Myth: 300 Words or Less – Studies have shown that our fickle internet attention spans aren’t what they used to be back in the newspaper years. However, there’s no need to limit yourself to 300 words or less, especially if it means sacrificing the quality of your post. If what you have to say is valuable, authentic and well-written, use as many words as necessary.
  3. Myth: Save Time, Outsource – For CEOs, business owners or technical experts who write to an audience of knowledgeable readers, your reputation is on the line. If you turn to someone either within your organization or elsewhere to ghostwrite under your signature, any misinformation or subtle mistakes will be attributed to you. There’s no taking it back with a “wait, I didn’t say that.”
  4. Myth: My Blog will Make Money – While it is possible to host ads that can bring in revenue, it would be necessary to have an enormous follower base in order for each click’s fraction of a cent to amount to any significant income. Fortunately, there’s always the lottery.
  5. Myth: Words Beat Images – The old adage about “1000 words” is definitely still true with images in blogs. High quality images grab readers attention, they communicate critical details, and by manually entering caption and metadata into your CMS when you upload images, you also earn added SEO points as well. It’s like the old timers say: “one jpeg is worth 10GB of text.”

Even today, as mobile devices and social media continue to shape and reshape the digital content space, the blog is as relevant as ever. Ultimately, your blog is your voice – so speak up! Here at The Borenstein Group, we eat blogging for breakfast. If you’d like to talk more about this and other digital strategies, we’d love to hear from you. Please give us a call at 866-703-8178, or visit our Contact Us page.

Federal Contractors Beware: Online Negative Reviews Directly Affect Your Brand Reputation.

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Having great Past Performances is a terrific start, but in the age of social media, B2G marketers who do not ‘listen’ constantly to online buzz could lose. Imagine that someone types your company name and out pops a negative reader’s comment under an industry story in the Washington Post or Federal Computer Week. This comment gets indexed right into your ‘online brand reputation’. Now imagine a government program manager (decision maker) googling your company two minutes before a presentation. Imagine the possibilities!

BtoB, the B2B marketing industry’s bible, has recently reported that “the influence of negative reviews on social sites is increasing, according to a new survey, with 80% of respondents saying poor reviews have caused them to change their purchasing decisions”. Data is derived from a study called “2011 Online Influence Trend Tracker” study from marketing company Cone Inc. Conversely, same study shows that confidence in positive online reviews also is growing, with 87% of respondents saying that thumbs-up comments influence their decision to buy.

In Public sector marketing, most federal contractors trust their Past Performances as the only source of ‘testimonials’ given that most agency executives aren’t likely to publicly endorse a product or a service. But with the advent of social media, you can go to Washington Technology, Federal Computer Week or Government Executive DOT COMS, and note that beneath each story or feature about a B2G player, there are open-comments. More over, if the topic is controversial, and your company is mentioned, you will note a threaded discussion that includes comments with negative and positive tonalities- ones you have no control over as they are published by the free press.

Marketing Solution: Be proactive. Survey the online terrain where your contracting business is mentioned. Then devise a proactive plan to ensure your past performances, case studies, and raving fans are on-guard to help you protect your online reputation. Moreover, don’t assume that your government customer is only looking at media-you-control such as your corporate web site. They could be googling your company right now. Are you ready?

 

Maximize Your Webinar’s Marketing Value

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Content comes first. One of the biggest disappointments for webinar viewers is a thinly veiled sales pitch parading as industry content. Go down this dead end road, and not only will your attendees refuse to purchase what you’re selling, they will be aggravated. Your webinar will have created more problems for your company and brand than it solved. Rather than being seen as a value center, you’ll be seen as, well, the opposite of a valuable use of their time.

Most of the organizations The Borenstein Group works with are B2B and B2G services firms and/or enterprise software providers. They realize how critical it is to deliver value in their marketing programs in order to generate leads and move prospects through the pipeline.

Of course, the webinar is a sales tool. Otherwise, why should your company do them? But to make your webinars most effective, step back and view them from the perspective of your prospects. What are they taking away? How can they better do their jobs, better understand their customers, be more profitable, etc? What’s in it for them?

Maximize webinar marketing effectiveness. Hint: Branding counts big.

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When costs are cut, executives look for ways to streamline marketing costs. If you’re reading this blog, we probably don’t need to state the case to you that webinars, or web seminars, are less expensive than events. The latter includes hotel rental, food and beverage, AV, etc. etc. And certainly, webinars are far less costly than a multi-city road show.

These cost cutting benefits are all good. But webinars are not the panacea. We’ve noticed some interesting trends as of late in the world of webinar marketing and execution. For one thing, there are a lot more of them for the reasons highlighted above. Like the deluge of sales and marketing related emails we all get, most of us in the tech marketing world are inundated with invitations, ads and other overtures to log onto webinars.
We’re going to take some time to explore this ever-growing marketing tactic in upcoming columns. But the first and most critical problem of webinar marketing is the issue of branding.
I’ll spare you my personal brand definition. Agencies often carefully wordsmith their own unique definition so as to brand themselves distinctly as branding experts. According to Wikipedia: “A brand is a collection of symbols, experiences and associations connected with a product, a service, a person or any other artifact or entity. Brands have become increasingly important components of culture and the economy, now being described as “cultural accessories and personal philosophies.”
If you have a webinar strategy, ask yourself, how well are your webinars branding your company? I can’t tell you how many webinars I schedule myself to attend, but have no connection to the hosting organization. Too often, moments after I log off, I won’t even remember the name of the benevolent organization that held the seminar. They haven’t made an impression with who they are, what they do and why the attendee would care. The onus to address those questions is upon them, not the attendee.
Webinar marketing must be treated with the same fundamentals of brand building that you would for an ad campaign, direct marketing initiative, etc. If the corporate or product brand is not tightly integrated with the content of the webinar, then it is a miss.
More on the dos and don’ts of webinar marketing in upcoming blog entries. Check back. You’ll be glad you did.

Five Ways to Ruin Your Webinar

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As webinars are an increasingly important tool in the lead generation activities of marketing departments of tech companies. But, if they aren’t done right, the Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI) will be adversely impacted.

Read on for five common pitfalls to avoid in your next webinar or series.

Your customers and prospects receive lots of offers to attend webinars. How many emails and other invitations have you received this week urging you to a product or solution webinar? How many have you received today? The important question: how many have you paid attention to and why?

Without further ado, here are the pitfalls:

 

1. Poor branding.

This is a big deal, and often a shortcoming for too many companies. How do you measure up?

 

2. Lack of content

If your webinar is a thinly-veiled sales pitch or you don’t have important information to communicate to the marketplace, a webinar strategy may not be your best option.

 

3. Failing at the follow up

We all know that follow up is where a lot of our best laid marketing plans too often fall apart. Make sure the follow up strategy is in place before you launch the webinar. How many days after the webinar will sales follow up? What will be their approach? How will they further quality leads? And, importantly, what role do you expect the webinar to have in your sales process?

 

4. Missing the mark

It is critical, of course, to deliver great content in a webinar. Secondly, it’s just as critical to use your webinars to build and reinforce your corporate and/or product brand. But make sure the two are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to distance your topic too far from what your company does. Just because you think prospects will opt into a webinar on a hot topic doesn’t mean hosting it will further the objectives of your organization.

 

5. Not getting the word out

This is Marketing 101. The marketing database and/or list to attract visitors to your webinars has to be a good one. Consider a distribution strategy that includes ads and sponsorship in influential industry media, through partners and other vehicles. Some media groups saturate their readership with emails for webinars, and a small business can get lost in the shuffle. Others are more targeted to industries, verticals, etc. It usually makes sense to opt for the latter.

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